


a roll of stars and fade to black

by skuls



Series: X Files Rewatch Series [11]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s04e05 The Field Where I Died, F/M, actually its a rewrite of tfwid, but its related to tfwid so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-15 22:54:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11815878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: A rewrite of "The Field Where I Died".





	a roll of stars and fade to black

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to @wtfmulder for encouraging me to write this.

The images come in a rush of painful yellow and black. His head aches and he moans, fumbling wildly. Someone is telling him to calm down, trying to soothe him, but reality seems to shift and fade away. He is rising, he is somewhere else.

The first thing he feels is the wind, the breeze on his sweat-soaked face. Grass brushes against his cheeks, the shadow of leaves shrouding him. The sounds of battle in the distance. The excruciating pain in his arm.

He moans and starts to move, but a hand pushes him back to the ground. “Calm down, Biddle,” the man beside him says gruffly. “Lie still.”

Somehow he recognizes this voice as the voice of his sergeant. He coughs raspily, lowering his head back to the ground. “Shouldn't be here, Sergeant,” he rasps. His sight travels down his arm, to a torn blue sleeve, blood soaked cloth bound around the wound in his skin. “Infection is setting in. No sense in staying with a dead man. No telling how long the battle will last.” The uniform is too hot, too scratchy and enveloping. He wants to sink into the nearby river and peel off his jacket. He wants to be at home in bed—a real bed. He wants the pain in his arm to cease, and he wants his sergeant to leave him. The penalty for deserting, for cowardice, is not deadly, but it is painful and humiliating. He doesn't deserve that.

“You need my help, Biddle. Don't stoke your pride and pretend you don't,” his sergeant says firmly, pressing his palm harder against the wound.

“They'll brand you a coward if they find you,” he tries. Pain, pain in his arm and his head and stars roll across his vision. “It's dishonorable.”

His sergeant’s jaw clenches. “Dishonorable,” he mutters. “Seems more dishonorable to leave a man alone to bleed to death than to hide from a battle.”

Pain, pain and fluorescent lights above him. Scully's voice, sounding like she is underwater: “The drug is still in his system.”

“Scully?” he calls. He reaches up and finds the sergeant instead, the man tending to him in the woods. It doesn't feel wrong, this illusion. Something about it feels familiar, as if it all happened before.

“Hush, Biddle.” His sergeant is gripping his hand firmly in some semblance of comfort. A shell explodes near them, and Mulder yelps, startled. “The rebels will find us,” his sergeant hisses. His hand moves to Mulder's mouth—not firmly, only in warning. To keep them safe. “Hush.”

In the shadows of the grove, his sergeant’s eyes are the same as Scully's. They hold the same weight, the same stern caring. It's as if they're the same person.

He is stricken with the knowledge, suddenly, that he is going to die. Not now, but soon, and his sergeant’s efforts will be for nothing. He can see the other man sitting by his bed, clearly devastated, hear his muffled apologies, his voice full of shame. It is the last thing he hears, and he wants to tell his sergeant (Scully, it's _Scully_ ) that it's not his fault. But it's too late.

Pain, pain. A roll of stars and fade to black. Scully is sitting by his bed, holding his hand. “Shh, Mulder,” she soothes, stroking his forehead. “You're okay. Try to sleep.”

“I knew you,” he whispers through  a mouth that tastes like cotton. He can still hear the explosions all around. He remembers the things he wanted to tell her a long time ago, in another life. “I know your soul.”

\---

Mulder sleeps, restless, in a hospital bed, and Scully sits by his side, just as restless. She tries to start a report three times before shoving her laptop aside. She's more concerned about Mulder at the moment. He's woken up a few times, mumbling incomprehensible things and grasping for her hand. She has no idea how strong the drug Forrester gave him was, but she knows the dosage was exponentially higher than what was given to the other victims. She has no idea how long it will take to completely leave his system, how long before the hallucinations stop.

Skinner taps on the door before entering. Scully turns in her seat to face him, rubbing wearily at her eyes. “Sir,” she says in acknowledgment.

Skinner nods in return. “How is he?”

She feels his forehead on instinct. “Temperature is going down. I think the drug is leaving his system. Slowly, but it is leaving. He's having nightmares, though, vivid ones.” Mulder mumbles something and she resists the urge to stroke his hair. “He'll be okay,” she adds.

“That's good.” Skinner sinks into the other chair, coat flapping around him. He looks as weary as she feels. (An effect of supervising the X-Files unit, she supposes.) “Forrester won't confess,” he says. “Says he has no idea how the drug got into Agent Mulder's system, that it must've happened beforehand because Mulder just staggered in and collapsed on his floor. It's bullshit… we found the drug in his apartment, along with his case notes, and we have three witness testimonies, even if some are incomplete. And you caught him interrogating Agent Mulder under the influence. We have enough to nail him.”

“I'd think so,” Scully mutters. She brushes her fingers over the back of Mulder's hand before turning back to Skinner. “And the victims have regained all of their memories of their abductions?”

(The drug that Forrester had given to all three of the victims—four, now, with Mulder—is a hallucinatory one that induces temporary memory lost. When three people in one apartment building had reported missing time, vivid nightmares, and strange needle marks, it had caught Mulder's attention, of course. He'd believed they were alien abductees. As the earliest victims’ memories of their actual abductions began returning, their statements started to clash and his theory started to lose traction. Mulder remained stubborn, insisted on interviewing all the other residents of the building. Which was when Forrester had gotten his opportunity to drug Mulder.)

“All but the third, but the M.O. is the same for all the cases,” says Skinner. “Trace evidence proves that all three victims were at Forrester’s apartment at one point or another. It's open and shut. He lured these people into his apartment, drugged them, and kept them for hours before allowing them to return home. We have him on kidnapping and use of an illegal drug.”

Mulder turns over restlessly in bed, sheets tangling around him. “Do we know why he did it?” Scully asks, watching Mulder out of the corner of her eye. She is worried about him. First the attack by Samuel Aboah, and now this. They end up in the hospital entirely too much.

“The notes found at his apartment included recaps of the victims’ time at his apartment, based what seems to be some kind of past life experiences specific to each victim. The notebooks were found among several books and printouts concerning reincarnation. It seems like he was obsessed with the theory of reincarnation, specifically with the details of the past lives of the victims. Forrester assumedly drugged them to get them to reveal details about their past lives.” Skinner clears his throat awkwardly. “We're confirming this theory with the victims now.”

Scully's brow furrows but she nods in acknowledgement. “That would make sense. All three victims reported strange dreams. Vicky Matheson remembered hers vividly; she described them as strange scenes from the past. The hallucinogenic properties of the drug could cause the victims to say exactly what Forrester wanted to hear.”

“That's the theory as we know it now. We're working with everyone to confirm it.” Skinner stands slowly, eyes stealing to Mulder's hospital bed. “We'll need to speak with Agent Mulder when he wakes up.”

“That all depends on his condition,” Scully says quickly, voice automatically sharpening in his defense.

“Right,” Skinner replies just as fast. “Keep me updated. I'm sure he'll make a full recovery.” He lingers at the door before exiting.

Scully turns back to Mulder, feeling his forehead again. His fever is receding. She breathes a quiet sigh of relief. He mumbles something fierce and run-together, catching her wrist desperately in a tossed-aside hand. She smooths his hair in an attempt at comfort before taking her seat again.

\---

He remembers another muddled dream, a field somewhere and a woman walking ahead of him. He doesn't recognize her until she turns around and meets his eyes and he sees the soul behind hers. She says something in a language he doesn't understand—or at least not anymore—and he laughs and replies in the same language, steps forward and leans down to kiss her. He knows her. He has always known her.

“Mulder,” Scully's voice says through the layers. He was rising but now it seems he is falling. He can't stop. “No,” he mumbles fiercely, reaching.

“Mulder?”

It seems to take an eternity for his eyes to open. Fluorescent lights, he's in a hospital room, and Scully is sitting beside him. “Hey,” she says when she sees him awake, squeezes his hand. “How do you feel?”

He groans, shifting on the mattress. “Hungover.”

“I'm not surprised. Forrester seemed to feel as if he wouldn't have as much time to study you, so he gave you three times more of the drug than the previous victim.”

He blinks sluggishly. “Forrester?”

Scully's brow furrows knowingly. “What's the last thing you remember?”

“We were in the office. The case, the abductees with missing time in Meadowood Apartments… did we investigate that?”

“We did. It turned out to be a normal human abductor.” She smirks at him a little. “Wendell Forrester. He lured his neighbors back to his apartment and drugged them, causing them to hallucinate. We split up to interview the residents of the complex. You, unfortunately, got Forrester’s floor. It seems that Forrester drugged you for the same purpose as the other victims when you arrived at his apartment for questioning. I found you in Forrester’s kitchen around ninety minutes after we split up, placed him under arrest, and brought you here to recover.”

“Just my luck,” he mutters. Of course he'd be drugged by a psycho on what seemed like a simple case. “What's the prognosis now? Am I still under the influence?”

“Your tox screen is clean, but you'll likely feel the effects of the drug for a while now. According to the other victims, you may experience vivid nightmares, temporary memory loss, dizziness and nausea… thus far, two of the victims have been able to recall their ordeal, so it'll come back.”

Mulder nods in relief. He holds up his arm, the one with blood dripping down it and pain coursing through it in his first dream, and sees needle marks in the same place he was wounded in the dream. “Got me good,” he says. “What was this guy's motive? Why target me?”

Scully sighs, squeezing his hand again before slipping her fingers out of his. “We're still trying to figure everything out, but notes labeled with the victims’ names and a large amount of material concerning reincarnation suggests that Forrester had an obsession with past lives, and the drug was a means of forcing the victims to hallucinate these supposed past lives. With coaching from him, I'm sure.”

Images from his dreams crowd his mind. All these lives he seems to have lived. He swallows unevenly, fiddling with the edge of the blanket. “Past lives?”

Scully smiles. “You believe in everything, Mulder. Didn't reincarnation make the list?” she teases.

“Sure, I was just, uh, surprised, I guess.” He meets Scully's eyes and is stunned by the familiarity in them. It feels almost different now, like their friendship has lasted longer, so much longer than four years. It feels unusual, the tingling on the back of your neck. It is almost overwhelming. “I believe in the possibilities, I've just… never thought about it before, I guess.” He chews his lower lip, looking back down at his lap. “Did he take notes on me? How long was I in there?”

“It looks like you went through four apartments before you got to Forrester. According to the last person you interviewed, you would've been in there about an hour.” Scully sounds ashamed. “There were partial notes on you, yes. Not as detailed… I'm sorry, Mulder.”

“Well, what did they say?” He tries to sit up, his hands scrabbling at the mattress for balance. “Can I read them?”

“I haven't even seen them, Mulder, and you need to rest right now,” she says sternly. Her hand comes down on his shoulder to push him back against the pillow. “We'll look at everything later, okay?” she adds, gently this time. “But you _need_ to rest.”

_You need my help, Biddle. Don't stoke your pride and pretend you don't._

His head is spinning. He feels confused, disoriented. “Okay,” he mumbles, leaning into the cool pillowcases. “Okay, I'll rest.”

Scully adjusts the pillow before sinking into her seat beside him. _I know you,_ he thinks. The roll of stars again, darkness descending. _I know your soul. I have always known your soul. We always find each other._

\---

The heat is all around her and she's trying to run away from it. Her skirt keeps getting caught on things. She trips hard at one point, falling face-down on the ashy ground. She stumbles to her feet, cursing under her breath. She knows her father would be astonished at her foul language, but when your world is burning down around you, things like that don't seem to matter.

“You will fall many more times like that,” says another voice. Inexplicably enough, it's one that she recognizes—one of the women who frequent the spring where she washes clothes. She looks up into the soot-soaked face of the other woman. Her companion looks grim, a knife in one hand. Her skirt is cut off jaggedly around her knees—terribly immodest, but things like that don't seem to matter either. Not now. “Here,” the other woman says, motioning to her full skirt. “Let me help you.”

She swallows, nods her consent. The other woman crouches and saws at the skirt. “The village will be gone by sunrise,” she says to her companion. Perhaps she is trying to make conversation, or perhaps she's just looking for someone to share in her sorrow. Everyone she knows is dead. Her cousin, a ward of her family since her parents died of a fever, is dead. Her cousin, her dearest friend. Samantha in this life. Mulder knows the souls. Samantha is her cousin, almost her sister, in this life, and her cousin is dead.

“Aye,” the other woman says. She coughs violently, the smoke in the air, and the point of the knife knicks her leg. She winces but doesn't say a word; the flames dancing in the distance are so, so much worse than the brief pain. “My apologies,” the other woman mutters. “My hands are a bit clumsy.”

“I am indebted to you for your help,” she says. The jagged end of her skirt falls away and she can move with ease now. She reaches down to help the other woman up, and their eyes meet for the first time. Scully, she realizes, it's Scully. Their souls seem destined to find each other again and again, and here she is. It is always her.

“You have saved my life, and I thank you,” Mulder says.

The other woman ( _Scully_ ) nods, brushing loose strands of hair away from her face. “We cannot linger here. You must run away, lest the fire take you like it has taken many others.” She coughs again, covering her mouth. “Run to the east, where the air is clear. Three miles down the road is another village. They shall help you there.”

Her heart racing, she stammers, “And what of you? Will you not accompany me?” She does not want to go alone.

“I must go back,” says the other woman. “My mother is in there. I will not leave her. When I find her, we will follow the path I have told you to. But for now, I must go back.”

She is looking for the words to tell her not to go, that she doesn't want to be alone in the destruction of the only world she has ever known, but the other woman will not listen. She is too determined.

The other woman takes her hand and squeezes briefly. “Godspeed,” she says. And then she is gone, disappearing into the inferno, and Mulder is alone.

She waits on a high hillside to the east, where she can still see the burning of the village. She does not want to go alone. She will wait for the other woman, the one with Scully's soul, and they can go together. She waits and waits, and the village is indeed gone by sunrise, but the other woman never returns.

\---

The feeling when he wakes up is devastatingly familiar. The same way he felt for a few terrifying minutes outside of Gerry Schnauz’s trailer, has felt a million times before. He's already memorized how it feels to lose her, in any life.

\---

The third victim, Eleanor Dawson, finally remembers her time in Wendell Forrester’s apartment, and her new statement matches the details of Vicky Matheson’s and Joseph Hubbard’s. Mulder's memory has yet to return, but Scully's account of events supports their story as well. Forrester is still refusing a confession on the same day Mulder goes home from the hospital. “There's too much evidence,” Scully tells him in his doorway the next morning, file in hand. “We have him up against the wall.”

He leans lazily against the door jamb. Most of the dizziness and fatigue has dissipated, but he's been plagued by strange dreams every night. All he can remember of the investigation so far is their interview with Vicky Matheson. “That Forrester’s file?”

“Yes. I thought you might want a better understanding on the case.” She bites her lower lip, uncomfortable. “A copy of Forrester’s notes on you are in here as well.”

He takes the file from her hands. He wants to know what happened. The feeling of not knowing is the worst part. “Have you looked at it?” he asks, running his thumb over the edge of the manila folder.

“No, I wanted to give you a chance to look at it first.” She closes the door behind her as she enters.

Mulder collapses on the couch, flipping open the top of the file. Pictures of the victims are pinned to the first page; he is not included. He flips through until he finds the photocopy of the handwritten page labeled _FBI AGENT MULDER._ “What do Matheson and Dawson and Hubbard think of Forrester’s reincarnation craze?”

“Hubbard and Dawson don't seem too interested. Matheson seemed curious, said she felt something of a connection to the dreams she'd been having.”

He slides the piece of paper out of the folder, turning it over and over in his hands. “And what do you think?”

“Honestly, Mulder? We found tapes of the abductions as well. It seems like Forrester coached all of his victims, at least in the area of past lives, and the drug could account for the so-called memories. I wouldn't read into it, I really wouldn't..”

Scully's tone suggests that she expects him to read into it anyway. He squirms a little. Forrester’s handwriting is absurdly neat. No one should have handwriting this neat, he thinks. “There are tapes?”

“Yes. I didn't listen to yours, but I listened to the other three. I don't know if it's a good idea for you to listen to yours, at least not yet.” She reaches out and takes his hand, squeezing it. “Mulder, you don't have to do this. This'll all be over soon. As soon as your memory returns and you can give your statement, we can forget about this until the trial.”

“I know,” he says. He puts the file down on the counter and puts the paper on his knee, turning his eyes down towards it.

_Subject is FBI agent investigating Eleanor, Joseph, and Vicky. Gave subject 3 doses of drugs (mentioned partner in the building, not a lot of time)._

_When asked to enter the past, silence first, followed by description of life in 1930s. Describes being a reporter, fiance is with OSS. Went on a ship—the Queen Anne—to protect a scientist and never returned. “Fiance is Scully”. Enlisted in WWII, died at Normandy._

_Further back: Union soldier in Civil War. Vividest memory—recalls his name being Sullivan Biddle, with the 44th New York. Wounded in Battle of Gettysburg. “Sergeant is Scully”. Describes Sergeant being discharged for staying with him during the battle. Died in hospital from infection in untreated wound._

_“The souls come back together... different... but always together.”_

_Describes peaceful life married to “Scully”, undetermined timeline. “Samantha is my son. Mom is my father here. I know them. I've found them before and will find them again.” Other children he thinks he might recognize._

_Describes life in village in Middle Ages. Lived with family—no siblings, cousin was like a sister. “Cousin is Samantha”. As teenage girl, village burned down. Family perished. Narrowly escaped with the help of another woman who died in the fire. “She is Scully. I lose her. Al-_

It ends there.

Mulder clears his throat, runs his thumb over the last word before setting it aside. “I guess he got stopped when you came in,” he says, looking up at Scully.

She's been watching him silently, palms braced against her knees. “He was writing when I came in,” she says. “You were on the floor, mumbling something. I was worried he'd go after you, but he ran further into the apartment when I pulled my gun.”

Mulder looks down at the paper again. All the stories that match his dreams, the sudden familiarity between them. He doesn't know how to explain it outside of the drug causing him to tap into something he would've never known was there. “What's Forrester’s obsession with this? Why reincarnation? Why drug four people just to get the details of their past lives?”

“He took a class in college that may have sparked an interest, but otherwise we aren't sure. He's still denying all involvement, but it's his apartment, his handwriting in the notes and his voice in the tapes.” Scully rolls her eyes. “It's ridiculous, considering how much we have on him. I still can't figure out his angle, though.”

He flips through the rest of the file. The notes on the other three victims are similar to his, if less detailed. Less vivid. There are photocopies from books with highlighted passages. Almost an entire passage on soulmates. Soulmates. He swallows and looks up at her. “I can't figure it out, either.”

“Are you okay, Mulder?” She stands, coming towards the piece of paper lying on the table.

He snatches it and slides it back into the file. “I'm fine.”

Her eyes are full of concern, but her phone rings before she can say anything. “Sorry,” she mutters, pulling her phone out of her pocket as she turns away. “Scully.”

He watches her as she talks, the fall of her hair, her mouth moving as she talks. He's thought about kissing her a million times, loved her quietly for a while now. And loved her loudly for years longer, centuries longer. She has been in every life he now remembers, the only recurrence. He doesn't know what to do with these new epiphanies.

“Mulder,” she is saying, turning back to him and tucking her phone back into her coat. “That was Skinner. Apparently Forrester has agreed to confess if he could confess to you. Only you.”

Forrester might know. He might be able to explain the strange cluster of memories he now has. “All right,” he says. “When do we go?”

She's already shaking her head. “Mulder, I don't think it's a good idea. You're still in bad shape…”

“This could get us a conviction, couldn't it? That's important.” He fumbles for his shoes on the floor. “I'll be fine, Scully. It's not like he could do anything to me in a building full of FBI agents.”

Scully's face is full of uncertainty. “I don't know…”

He's already halfway to the door, past her. “I need to do this,” he says, without turning back to look at her.

Her hand brushes his shoulder. “Okay,” she says, reluctance audible in her voice. “I'm coming with you.”

\---

They’re at the Bureau within in the hour. Mulder goes into the interrogation room with Forrester and Scully goes behind the one-way mirror with Skinner. “Are you sure about this, sir?” she asks. They are watching Mulder take a seat across from Forrester. Forrester offers Mulder an easy smile. Mulder clenches his jaw and holds his eye contact.

“I think it’s the best course of action, all things considered,” Skinner replies. He is staring straight ahead, refusing to look at her. Scully shifts uncomfortably and turns her attention back to the scene in the interrogation room.

“Agent Mulder,” Forrester is saying. “I don’t suppose you remember me.”

The fact that Mulder can’t is clearly bothering him, but he does a good job of hiding it. “It doesn’t matter what I remember,” he replies evenly. “You said you wanted to give your confession to me?”

Forrester doesn’t say anything for a minute, tips his head to the side as he looks at Mulder. “They told me they found my notes,” he says. “I suppose you looked at the ones I took on you. Have you listened to the tape?”

“So you’re admitting that you drugged me and took notes on the hallucinations that followed, as well as taped the event.” Mulder’s voice is incredibly steady, his gaze steely.

“Sure, I’ll admit to that.” Forrester is just as calm. Charismatic, even. “I just want to know what you thought. I’ve tried that particular drug before, and I know it induces memories of past lives.”

_Oh god,_ Scully thinks. This is exactly the kind of thing that Mulder will be enticed by.

Mulder shifts in his seat, so slightly that it’s barely perceptible. But Scully notices, and she can tell Forrester does, too. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come on, Agent. Surely you’ve seen the things you said in my kitchen, even if you don’t remember saying them.”

“Did you lure Eleanor Dawson, Joseph Hubbard, and Vicky Matheson to your apartment under false pretenses?” Mulder’s tone is hard enough to cut rock.

“The Civil War battlefield. It was the clearest one, you know. You knew your name. You described the blood running down your arm, the sounds of the battle nearby…”

“Did you drug them and keep them in the apartment until their hallucinations stopped?” Mulder is getting louder, fists balled on top of the table. He is furious, and Scully furious for him.

“Scully tending to you? Deserting the battle to make sure you didn’t bleed to death? The efforts were futile in the end, of course. You were terribly emotional when you described your death, Scully at your bedside, apologizing for not keeping you safe.”

Scully stiffens, a lump building in her throat. She's caught off guard, hearing her own name. Mulder’s face whitens. He doesn’t say anything, his hand clenching around the edge of the table.

“Scully is the one who arrested me, right?” Forrester continues, self-satisfied. “She’s the only one who appeared in every single one of your memories, you know.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mulder mumbles. For a split second, Scully thinks Forrester is lying, but one look at Skinner confirms it. He doesn’t seem the least bit surprised. Whatever Mulder said to Forrester, it was something about her.

“Souls mate eternal, you told me,” Forrester says. “It seems yours and hers are greatly intertwined. You sounded terribly sad when you described her death in your life in the Middle Ages. You only knew her for a second, but she saved your life. You seemed devastated that you couldn’t save hers.”

“Did you kidnap Eleanor Dawson, Joseph Hubbard, and Vicky Matheson? Did you drug them and hold them against their will?” Mulder is almost shouting.

“She seemed pretty upset when she found us, you know. Worried about you. The way you described your sergeant in your life as Sullivan Biddle. She might love you in this life, you know.”

Scully closes her eyes briefly. She harbors an unexpected hatred for this man, more ferocious than it had originally been. She can’t look at Skinner.

Mulder is paler than a sheet, almost quivering. “I just want a confession,” he says through clenched teeth. “Technically, we have enough to convict you either way, but it would be extremely helpful if you did confess. I think you owe me, considering that you not only drugged me, but you drugged me with three times more than the other victims got, resulting in a trip to the hospital.”

“I’ll confess,” Forrester says, as if generous. “I’ll tell you if you tell me how you’ve found her in all these lifetimes. I’ve been looking and looking and I can’t find who I’m looking for. I need to know how.”

Mulder’s jaw clenches, unclenches. He nods tensely. “Just confess and I'll tell you anything you want to know.”

It's a kid's trick, but Mulder has the upper hand here. Forrester leans closer to the microphone and says clearly, “I confess. I convinced Vicky Matheson, Joseph Hubbard, and Eleanor Dawson to come into my apartment. I drugged them with a hallucinogen and recorded the resulting hallucinations in the name of studying people’s past life memories. I drugged Agent Mulder with a larger dose when he came to my apartment to interview me.”

Mulder nods again. He smirks, somewhat, and gets to his feet without another word. The door slams behind him.

Forrester’s face turns red. Scully fumbles to turn off the volume in the room so they won’t have to hear him yell. Her face is red and hot. “Sir, what he said…” she stammers.

“Ramblings of a madman,” Skinner says simply. When she turns to face him, his face is almost neutral. “I don’t think anything of it, Agent. It’s over now. It's forgotten.”

She wants to thank him, but she slips out of the tiny room silently instead. She finds the restroom and splashes cold water on her face until she feels like she can breathe evenly. She dries her hands methodically as she exits. It doesn’t matter, she tells herself. He was hallucinating. Forrester isn’t reliable. None of it is real. But Forrester’s words can’t stop pounding in her mind. _She might love you in this life._ She swallows hard, pushes it aside. _It doesn’t matter,_ she tries. It’s over. She just needs to find Mulder so they can go home and forget it all.

She looks in their office, all the usual haunts that they usually inhabit and all the ones that they don’t, and tries his cell phone three times. He is nowhere to be found.

\---

Mulder calls Frohike in the cab to ask him to dig up everything he can find on a Sullivan Biddle from the 44th New York in the Union Army, and on a ship, the Queen Anne, from the 1930s. “I'll owe you one,” he says, knee bobbing frantically.

“Sure, Mulder, but why do you need this? Case or something? At least give me a challenge, man, that stuff is child's play.”

“Just… I need it. Please.” His fingers clench around the phone. He has to know, he has to know if he's crazy.

“Sure,” Frohike says after a short silence. “I'll call you when I have it.”

Mulder hangs up and slides the phone back into his coat. He's exhausted; he rests his head against the glass.

Meadowood Apartments was probably a nice apartment complex until it was strung through with crime scene tape. It’s all gone now, outside of a yellow strip dangling by the doorbell, but the building still looks like a shell, a ghost town.

This specific apartment building has no elevator, so Mulder has to go up five flights of stairs to get to his destination. He pauses in the stairway, overwhelmed, sinks down on a step and leans against the wall. All he can see when he closes his eyes is her face. Her eyes, the soul behind them that he’s seen in so many places. It’s starting to fade as the memories come back, but he can’t get rid of this feeling. Her overwhelming presence.

He feels dizzy. His head is spinning; he presses it into the drywall and clenches his fists. God, she heard all that. He'll never be able to look her in the eye again. Or Skinner, for that matter. This will stand out as one of the more embarrassing incidents in his lifetime—surprisingly enough, considering all the other candidates. He can never tell her he's in love with her now, she'll think it's an influence from the drug. She'll think it's just him buying into Forrester’s bullshit. It doesn't feel like bullshit, but she'll never believe that, either.

His head is still spinning, but he stubbornly gets to his feet and keeps going. He's on a mission.

Eleanor Dawson isn't home, so he starts with Vicky Matheson. She greets him with familiarity at the door. “I was sorry to hear that bastard got to you,” she says, stepping aside to let him in. “I never trusted him, you know. He's been messed up ever since his wife died.”

“Right,” Mulder says awkwardly, hands in his pockets.

Vicky leans against the door jamb, crossing her arms. “So why are you here? Have there been any new developments?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” he says quickly. “We just got a confession out of him, actually. I was just…” He shifts on his feet. “Wondering. Forrester drugged you and asked details of your past life, right?”

“Yes, he did. I assume he did the same to you?”

“Apparently, he did. I still can't remember.” Mulder chews his lower lip nervously. “I've had…”

“Nightmares,” she supplies. “Scenes from your past.”

Only slightly stunned, he nods.

“You're surrounded by people you don't know—and you yourself are someone you don't know—but everything about it is familiar. You know what's going to happen. It's like a scene from your own life.”

“Exactly,” Mulder says in a rush.

Vicky nods in acknowledgement. “I had them, too,” she says. “They stopped eventually, once my memory returned. I wasn't sure what to make of them until I remembered what Forrester did to me.”

“And you believed them?”

She shrugs. “I didn't have much reason not to. I've always been intrigued by the possibility of past lives, and I felt like I recognized my family members in the dreams. It made sense to me. But it didn't change much.”

A bead of sweat slides down his hairline. He sways slightly in place. “I-it didn't change anything? Make you rethink life, the choices you've made?”

“Not especially,” says Vicky. “I mean, it was jarring at first, of course, but I don't see why anything that may have happened in a past life I lived should affect what I do in the life I'm living now. Or the lives I will live.”

“What if it did?”

She seems taken aback. “What?”

Mulder feels his stomach rolling, as if he is out to sea. “W-what if you found out that the woman you think you might be in love with… t-that you'd come across her soul in multiple timelines? That there had been in other timelines where you'd loved her and lived with her, and you'd made a strong connection even in lives where you didn't?” He swallows hard against the nausea. “And you don't know how to interpret it, the idea that you and her could be… meant to be or some shit like that, but you love her, and you don't know if she'd ever feel the same way, but it doesn't end up mattering because the man who exposed all of this to you also exposes the fact that you'd loved her in another life to her?”

Vicky is staring at him incredulously. “Agent Mulder? Are you okay?”

He swallows dryly. What is he saying? “I'm fine,” he says quickly. “I-I’m sorry. It's been a long day. Do you know if Joseph Hubbard is home?”

“Sure, I think so.” He moves towards the door, and she goes to open the door. “I wouldn't take what Forrester did too seriously, Agent Mulder,” she adds. “I didn't find it life-changing. We were drugged.”

“Yeah,” Mulder says absently. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Matheson.”

He goes to Joseph Hubbard’s apartment next, silently chiding himself for the scene at Vicky Matheson’s apartment. What is wrong with him? Thankfully, he manages to hold it together at Hubbard’s apartment—long enough for him to confess that yes, he'd had the dreams, but no, he didn't think anything of them. “I don't believe in that bullshit,” he tells Mulder, almost chuckling.

“The dreams didn't change your mind?” Mulder asks. His knee is bobbing; he presses a hand to the top to stop the motion. “You didn't feel some connection to the-the people you saw in your dream? Like you knew them?”

Joseph shrugs. “Nah. Nothing like that. Anything that happened, it was a result of that maniac and his wacko drug. I don't like to split hairs.”

He chews his lower lip nervously, fingers tapping frantically. There seems to be nothing else to say. He is looking for something that Joseph Hubbard cannot give. “Thank you for your time.”

His cell phone rings outside of Hubbard’s apartment. It's Scully. He hesitates for a minute before declining the call. He doesn't know what he'd say to her in the moment.

Mulder ends up at Forrester’s apartment, rips down the crime scene tape across the door and enters. It feels familiar, the threshold. He feels a phantom tingling on his arm, in the spot he'd been injected. The room rolls; he stumbles across the carpet and reaches for the kitchen counter for balance. He feels like vomiting.

The memories come flooding back to him. Of him on Forrester’s kitchen floor, fuzzy and confused, going through these memories of a past he didn't know he had. Crying through a haze as he recalled the times he'd lost her. His knees turn to jelly; he clutches the edge of the counter hard and sinks to the tile. _This is familiar,_ he thinks, cheek to the grimy linoleum. _I was here._

He thinks he remembers Forrester’s questions: _Who is Scully? Wife? Girlfriend?_ He remembers Forrester’s look of interest, pen poised, as he'd gotten emotional. The crash of fear he'd remembered when she'd been locked in that trailer, screaming for his help. It was still fresh, and he'd been forced to relive her loss again and again.  It's sickening to remember. The haze of the drugs and the past lives and losing Scully.

His phone rings again. Scully has been calling almost constantly since he left the Bureau, so he's ready to ignore it, but then he remembers Frohike’s promise to call and scrambles to pick it up. “Mulder,” he mutters through clenched teeth.

“I found your ship, Mulder,” Frohike says on the other end. “It's a ghost ship, in fact. It vanished in the Bermuda Triangle. Pretty spooky. Fits your M.O. I'm sorry I doubted you.”

_Fits the story,_ he thinks, and closes his eyes. “And the soldier?”

“Sullivan Biddle, 44th New York. He does exist. He was wounded in the Battle of Gettysburg, lost an arm. Died in the hospital, apparently.” Mulder swallows. He can remember the part where he remembered Sullivan Biddle’s death, the sudden shock of it. “Was that what you wanted to know?”

He swallows hard, “Yeah,” he says. “That's what I wanted to know.”

He hangs up on Frohike and presses 1 on his speed dial. There's no denying the truth now. But it doesn't matter—he needs her help.

\---

“Pick up, dammit, pick up,” Scully mutters, clutching the phone and staring down at her furiously. It rings four more times before going to voicemail. She clicks it off. “Goddamnit, Mulder,” she hisses. “Where are you?”

“Agent Scully?” It's Skinner. She jolts a little before turning to meet him. “I have the tape of Agent Mulder,” he says, passing it to her.

“Thank you, sir.” The tape feels unnaturally cold in her hands. She turns it over and over absently.

“I'll… leave you alone to listen,” Skinner adds awkwardly, turning away. She's grateful for that. The least she can do is attempt to maintain her dignity. The door snicks shut behind him and she collapses at the table, sliding the tape into the Walkman and pressing Play.

The entire ordeal seems fairly straightforward at first. Mulder describes a life in the 1930s, his voice only quivering slightly when he described his fiance as “Scully”. (Scully bites down hard on her lip, intertwining her fingers.) But he slowly starts to falter as the story goes further, finally breaking when he talks about his fiance leaving on a mission. “I'm not allowed to accompany her to the ship so I go to her apartment to bid her goodbye… I kiss her and tell her I'll see her in a few weeks. I never see her again.” His voice is thick but he continues on, strong as she knows he is. “I never know what happened to her. The letters stop. The investigators I hire cannot find her. I am told it's likely that the ship sank and that she perished along with it.” He takes a shaky breath, like he's about to cry, another before continuing. “I enlist after Pearl Harbor. I die on the beach at Normandy.”

Scully swallows hard and twines her fingers tighter. She won't stop listening. She needs to figure out where he went.

He smoothly describes the life where they'd fought together in the Civil War. Right up until the end, when he's describing the battle, when he was wounded. “He saves me,” he says. “He tries so hard. He stays with me and abandons the battle, gets discharged, and…” His voice breaks slightly. “It's for nothing. They put me in the hospital. It's still painful. The pain never stops. And my sergeant… he comes to visit me before he goes home. He's there when I die. He…” A lengthy pause, his trembling voice: “He is sad. He tells me he's sorry he couldn't save me, that I was a good friend. I want to tell him I'm sorry I caused him to be discharged, that he should've left me behind, but I can't speak. He is crying. I have never seen him cry before.” Mulder sniffles. “I slip away.” Quiet for a minute except for Mulder's uneasy breathing and Scully’s cheeks are wet. “The souls come back together... different... but always together. He doesn't know... he doesn't know... I'm waiting for him… he doesn’t know that we will live again. We _will_ live again.”

Scully pauses the tape, overwhelmed. She presses her forehead to her arm and closes her eyes. She doesn't believe this, she doesn't, but God, his voice. Describing his death. Her unable to save him. It's too much, and it's a long minute before she wipes her eyes and presses play again.

His voice takes on a certain fondness when he describes their life together, where they'd apparently been married and happy. Had kids together. She suddenly hears words he'd said to her a month or more ago, _I never saw you as a mother before,_ and her nose stings. All these things she's lost, things she hasn't even told her family or her partner. All the things he's lost, all he's had to live through. It doesn't matter, because this is all bullshit, but hearing Mulder describe a life without all of these things with so much ease in his voice, so much peace, is almost painful.

His voice starts trembling again when he starts to describe another life, one where he'd been a young woman living in a medieval village that had burned down. He describes a brief meeting with another woman while escaping the carnage. Mulder's voice takes on the same thickness and sorrow, like he's holding back tears. “She saves my life… and then she leaves,” he says. “To find her mother. I wait for her… I'm grateful, I have no one else, but she never returns…” He makes a small choking sound. “She dies,” he whispers. “She is Scully.”

Scully isn't surprised, somehow, but that doesn't stop the shock. She swallows hard and considers turning the tape off again. Reconsiders. _I have to know where he went._

“I lose her,” Mulder says, tone thick with sorrow and resentment, his words slurring together. “Always… I always… I don't think I'm gonna make it, sometimes. In this life. She keeps getting taken away, and I can't… Just a few weeks ago, someone kidnapped her. Wanted to hurt her. I thought I was going to be too late…” His voice cracks, crumbles at the word, and he's quiet.

“Agent…” Forrester says on the tape, eagerly. “Would you describe Scully as your soul mate? In all of these lives?”

Scully sucks in a breath. Before Mulder can respond, she hears a faint pounding and her own voice calling through the door. Here's when she arrested him. “Scully,” mumbles Mulder hazily, but with the same fondness from before melting through. An affection he rarely shows around her, but her stomach always flips when he does. She's thought she might love him before.

More pounding on the door, and she doesn't want to listen anymore. She suddenly feels like she has violated every inch of Mulder's privacy, become the spy she was supposed to be. She doesn't want to listen to her arrest Forrester, the way her voice had risen in panic when she'd crouched beside Mulder and seen how bad off he was. The fear she'd felt. She jabs the pause button hard with her thumb and takes a shaky breath, laying her head on the table. _Oh, Mulder,_ she thinks. She remembers his terrified shouts for her through the walls of Schnauz’s trailer all too well. Like the world was ending and she was all that mattered, all that was worth saving. She doesn't know she'll forget. She never forgets the feeling of almost losing him.

Someone pounds on the real door, behind her, and she jolts. “Agent Scully?” Skinner calls from the other side.

She sighs, brushing stray hairs away from her face, and calls, “Come in, sir.” She ejects the tape from the Walkman and lets it slide into the middle of her palm. The solid feeling is comforting. “Nothing of any importance on the tape,” she says. “Nothing to indicate where he would've gone.”

“I'm sure Agent Mulder just went home,” Skinner offers. “He seemed exhausted, and the ordeal in the interrogation room didn't help anything.”

Scully rubs her temples wearily. “You're probably right.” There is no reason to think that Mulder did anything but go home and dodge her calls. There is no reason to be panicked. Except. She thinks about Mulder describing his own death. _He is sad. He tells me he's sorry he couldn't save me, that I was a good friend._ She swallows and stares at her fingers.

Her phone rings in her pocket.

She should probably be embarrassed by how quickly she fumbles for it. “Scully,” she says in the speaker, tucking it between her ear and shoulder, trying to force her voice to remain calm.

“Scully, it's me,” Mulder mumbles. It is the same way, almost, that he sounded when she'd crouched beside him at Forrester’s. Hazy, words slurring and melting together.

“Is it Mulder?” Skinner asks. It sounds like he's talking to her from underwater. All she can hear is the rush of Mulder's breathing in her ear.

She nods quickly, turning away and staring at the wall. “Mulder,” she says. “Are you okay? Where did you go?”

“Forrester’s apartment,” he slurs. “I think I'm sick.”

She'll chide him for being an idiot later. “I'm on my way. Hang tight,” she promises. She lowers the phone from her ear without hanging up and explains to Skinner: “He's collapsed at Forrester’s apartment. I'm going to go get him.”

Skinner turns immediately and goes with her out the door. “Do you think he needs an ambulance?”

“I doubt it. He needs rest. I'll need to get him home, though. He's still feeling the effects of the drug and shouldn't have been left alone like that.”

“I'll follow behind you,” Skinner says. “You'll need my help to move him.”

She tries her best not to speed on the way over, but she can't be blamed for the lead foot she acquired in her teenage years. She half-jogs, half-runs up the five flights of stairs to Forrester’s apartment. Vicky Matheson is just inside, crouching over Mulder. “He seemed kind of out of it when he came to my apartment, so when I went to take out the trash and saw Forrester’s door open…” she says apologetically.

Scully crouches beside Mulder, feels his forehead. He's burning up. She brushes hair off of his forehead and asks Vicky, “What were his symptoms?”

Vicky shrugs. “He seemed kind of dizzy… he kind of rambled… he was asking about the dreams I had. My past lives.”

“He was looking for answers,” Scully whispers. She sits beside him on the ground, stroking his cheek. “Mulder, can you hear me?” He groans quietly, but doesn’t open his eyes. "Skinner is on his way. We're going to get you out of here,” she tells him as he breathes under her hand. She is unintentionally reminded of Mulder's recount of his death in another life. _You're not dying,_ she thinks firmly. He just needs to rest. And he won't die anytime soon after this. They have to have more time.

Skinner shows up and helps get Mulder down the stairs, and then into her car. She straps him in and asks Skinner to meet them at her apartment. He'll be okay.  

When she's driving them home and watching him sleep out of the corner of her eye, for one brief, sleep-deprived moment she believes in soul mates.

\---

The dreams stop an undetermined amount of time later. He stops seeing the eyes of familiar people in them. The underlying feeling of a connection seems to fade.

Mulder sleeps, peaceful.

\---                  

He wakes up in an unfamiliar bed, sheets tangled around him. Upon shoving the comforter aside and turning over, he realizes it's Scully's bed. Scully's bedroom. Scully is dozing in a chair next to the bed. She must've found him at Forrester’s and brought him back here.

He smiles a little, brushes his fingers over the back of her hand, croaking, “Hey, Doc.”

Her eyes flutter open. The familiarity of them has faded, at least in the sense of thousands of years. But it is still her.

The ends of her mouth curve up at the edges when she sees him. “Hey,” she says, leaning over the bed to feel his forehead. “How do you feel?”

“Like hell,” he mumbles, leaning his head against her arm. “What happened?”

“The activity wore you out. The dizziness and nausea felt by the previous victims were experienced in increased amounts for you, matching the increased dosage of the drug, and it seems you passed out in Forrester’s apartment.” Her tone is full of disappointment, the cause confirmed by her next words: “You shouldn't have ditched me and run off like that. You needed more rest.”

“I'm sorry,” he says. And he is—he needed answers, but either way, Scully shouldn't have had to come scrape him off of Forrester’s floor.

She nods in acknowledgement. “Well, you'll be fine now,” she says. “But you need to rest. No more work, no running after leads or taking statements. Okay?”

“Okay,” Mulder says, looking away. Awkwardness settles in like a thick fog. He chews his lip. “Scully, about what happened…”

“It doesn't matter, Mulder,” she says immediately.

Something inside him pangs. “It doesn't matter?” he repeats.

“You were drugged. Wendell Forrester took advantage of you, manipulated your thoughts. It wasn't your fault.”

He blinks in surprise, looking up at her. “You don't think it was real?”

“All signs point to your experience being a result of the drug…”

“It was _real,_ Scully,” he insists. “I had Frohike look into the specifics from the vision, Sullivan Biddle and the Queen Anne… they were real. The stories were an exact match to what I described when I was under.”

She slips her hand into his, and he's not sure where she's going with this. “Couldn't those just be coincidences?” she asks gently. “Or… things you'd heard of a long time ago and forgotten? Frohike told me that the Queen Anne was a ghost ship, something that you could've easily come across at one point or another in the X-Files.”

“It's not like that, Scully,” he says stubbornly. He pulls his hand away. “I'd never heard of any of this in my life before a few days ago. I'd never even _considered_ the idea of past lives! And it… it…” He is losing traction fast, making less and less sense. “It all seemed so real,” he whispers.

Scully takes his hand again, squeezes it. “I listened to the tape, Mulder,” she says, still gentle. “And I have no reason to believe anything other than the drug playing on the fears and emotions you were feeling at the time.” He looks over at her in surprise; her eyes are full of encouragement. He'd recognize them anywhere. “Things you were thinking or feeling were manipulated in ways you couldn't imagine. And being under the influence of the drug only enhanced the illusion. The feelings behind the illusion were real, but the illusion itself is not.”

He swallows. He thinks he might know what she is saying, but he doesn't quite believe it. He doesn't know what to say. “So… you don't believe,” he says uncertainly.

She pauses, looking down at their hands on the bed. “I don't know if I believe in reincarnation. Or destiny. I do believe God has a plan,” she says finally. “But I also believe we make our own choices in life, Mulder. Whatever might’ve happened in any past lives we might’ve had, I believe we control our own fate.”

Her fingers are cool above his. He runs his thumb over hers tentatively. “So… the concept of soulmates?”

“I believe we make our own choices,” she repeats. She raises her hand to cup his jaw, leans forward to kiss him slowly. It goes unspoken: _This is mine._

When she finally pulls away, he feels not unlike he imagines being stuck by lightning would feel. “You don't, uh… you don't think that was meant to happen?” he asks huskily. “Scully?”

“Not one bit,” she says firmly before kissing him again.

\---

Scully won't let him go home. She's taken the day off of work to keep an eye on him (“Skinner’s orders”). She decides it's okay for him to move to the couch after he whines about being bored for twenty minutes. He channel-surfs while she curls in the corner with a thick book. “You're more or less my entertainment, Scully,” Mulder says, poking her leg. She smirks at the book instead of him and swats his hand away, but doesn't protest when he eventually lies down with his head on her thigh.

(There seems to be a new weight to it all, a new rhythm. Something that has changed, outside of the fact that she kissed him. He catches her looking at him sometimes with pools of emotion in her eyes before she looks away. He thinks listening to the tape affected her more than she's letting on, thinks she might’ve found something familiar there. He'll pretend it doesn't matter.)

Sometime around ten, Scully insists he go to bed. “You're an insomniac’s worse nightmare,” he teases.

“Come on, you need your rest if you want to go back to work next week.” She motions him towards the bedroom.

Slightly stricken, he says, “Scully, I can take the couch.”

“Don't be ridiculous, Mulder,” she says with a sense of finality he can't argue with.

Mulder follows her into the bedroom and crawls in under the sheets, is only slightly surprised when she crawls in beside him. On an impulse, he rolls towards her and puts his head on her shoulder. She reaches down and takes his hand, closes her eyes.

Something has shifted, there's no denying it. Mulder turns it over and over in his mind until they're almost asleep when he's stricken by a certain thought. “Dana,” he says, rolling away to face her.

She jolts, opens her eyes and turns towards him, surprise on her face, and he's not surprised, he hasn't used her first name in years, but he plunges on anyway. “If, um... early in the four years we've been working together... an event occurred that suggested or somebody told you that we'd been together in other lifetimes... always... wouldn't it have changed some of the ways we looked at one another?”

She seems to understand what he means. She doesn't hesitate, just says, “Even if I knew for certain, I wouldn't change a day.” She lies back down, adds, “Well, maybe that Flukeman thing. I could've lived without that just fine.”

His hand still clutched in hers, Scully tugs at his until he's almost on top of her. Mulder smiles, presses his nose into her hair and closes his eyes. Whatever their destiny, whatever might’ve happened before or what will happen, right now they seem to be doing just fine.

**Author's Note:**

> so this rewrite was inspired by my frustration with tfwid trying to tell us that a woman that we knew for all of twenty minutes was mulder’s soulmate. and then they just killed her at the end. while the performances in the episode are good, i felt like it came off stale and unauthentic, although i liked the premise. this is my attempt to do something different with the premise. there were, however, things from tfwid that i appreciated, which make appearances in this fic.
> 
> \- the sullivan biddle storyline is one i find interesting (i didn’t even mind scully being his sergeant) so i incorporated it partially here. however, sullivan ballou, the guy who inspired that part of the episode, was a UNION soldier, not a confederate soldier like in the episode. idk why they switched it, but i switched it back. otherwise, my version is uninspired by sullivan ballou, although his letter to his wife is beautiful.
> 
> -i took the 1930s story partially from triangle as a pure self indulgence
> 
> -i borrowed several lines of dialogue from mulder’s past life monologue, although i reincorporated some of the ones i used. the “i wouldn’t change a day” sequence is also not mine, but i like it so much i kept it. (fun fact: having only seen tfwid twice, and the last time being november 2015, i’ve thought that exchange took place at the end of the episode for years. apparently it does not, but i liked that fantasy so i had it rounding out my fic.) thanks to inside the x transcripts for helping with this.
> 
> -i liked the element of tfwid that takes place at the end of the case. all the action is over, and the focus on the episode is on the idea of past lives. i tried to incorporate this idea as well. one of my criticisms about the episode, though, is how much time they spend on the cult--it takes away from the other story. which is why i set everything in the aftermath and the story’s main villain gets like one scene. 
> 
> -i apologize for any ooc-ness. it’s harder than expected to write a soulmate/reincarnation episode. which is possibly why tfwid sucked.


End file.
